Pill containers having recessed pill compartments are well known. These pill containers are used to store and sort pills for patients that are required to take one or more medicated pill types per day. The patients may handle the pill containers themselves or, if they stay in establishments such as medically-supported retirement homes, the medical staff will handle the pill containers to distribute the medication to the patients. A typical pill container will contain a patient's pill doses for an entire week.
Pill containers conventionally comprise a pill receptacle which is made from a moulded semi-rigid plastic sheet in which recessed pill compartments are formed. The pill compartments define top mouth openings that are circumscribed by coplanar edges. A single sealing sheet may be applied on the coplanar pill receptacle edges to cover and individually seal the pill compartments. Pills are inserted in the different pill compartments according to doses which are required to be taken at a given time of day before the pill compartments are sealed. Respective pill compartments may correspond to the morning, lunch, supper and bedtime doses, for each day. Since each pill compartment is individually sealed and properly identified, it is clear and easy for the patient or the medical staff to know which pill compartment needs to be accessed for administering medication to a particular patient on a given day and at a given time of day. The pill container will often be designed to further allow each individually sealed pill compartment to be detached from the remaining portion of the pill container. When medical staff needs to distribute only a specific dose of medication at a given time of day, it is possible to simply detach the appropriate pill compartment and give it to the patient who can access the pills by himself.
Cover sheet members are provided that comprise a sealing sheet for use as discussed above and a protective sheet that overlays the sealing sheet. More particularly, the sealing sheet has opposite identification and adhesive surfaces. The former is used to write down medical information, medication information, user identification, date, time of the day at which the pills should be taken, name of the user's pharmacist, name of the prescribing doctor and the like information; while the latter is provided with an adhesive allowing the sealing sheet to adhere to the pill receptacle. The protective sheet overlays the sealing sheet on its adhesive surface to prevent the sealing sheet from accidentally sticking to miscellaneous objects before it is installed. Different types of adhesives may be used on the sealing sheet, including so-called temporary adhesives that allow the sealing sheet to be removed from and re-installed on the pill receptacle if access to the pill compartments is required; and so-called permanent adhesives that have strong enough adhering properties that will prevent the sealing sheet from being removed from the pill receptacle without tearing the sealing sheet apart, once it is installed on the pill receptacle. The latter so-called permanent adhesives are of particular interest for us in this Background of the Invention section and it will be considered from hereon that a permanent adhesive is used unless noted otherwise.
To apply the sealing sheet on the pill receptacle, the protective sheet is first peeled away from the sealing sheet and the sealing sheet may then be applied on the pill receptacle. This is accomplished by aligning the cover sheet member with respect to the pill receptacle with the help of a tray on which the pill receptacle rests. The tray, the pill receptacle and the cover sheet member indeed comprise complementary alignment members that allow the pill receptacle and the cover sheet member to be properly aligned with respect to each other before the protective sheet is removed when they are installed on the tray. These alignment members are found for example in the form of lugs that extend from the tray, these lugs cooperating with holes made in the pill receptacle and the cover sheet member to align the cover sheet member with respect to the pill receptacle. Once this alignment is achieved, the protective sheet is removed and the sealing sheet is applied on the pill receptacle.
Pills are inserted in the pill compartments before the sealing sheet is applied on the pill receptacle.
Some pill receptacles include weakness zones along the edges that circumscribe the pill compartments, to allow the individually sealed pill compartments from being detached from the rest of the pill receptacle. This allows individual medication doses to be distributed to patients instead of providing them with an entire pill container. The weakness zones on the pill receptacle are designed to allow the pill compartments from being easily manually detached by being sheared off from the adjacent pill receptacle portions. The sealing sheet is usually provided with weakness zones also in the form of cutaway lines that correspond to the position of the pill receptacle weakness zones, to allow the sealing sheet to tear cleanly when a pill compartment is detached.
Whether the pill compartments are detachable from the rest of the pill receptacle or not, to retrieve the pills from the sealed pill compartments, the sealing sheet must be pierced above desired pill compartments whereby access to the pills becomes possible. One interest in having the sealing sheet being pierced is that it is easy to visually assess whether the pill receptacle has been accessed or not. This helps prevent patients from voluntarily or involuntarily taking more or less medication than they should.
The sealing sheet may be provided with weakness zones thereon to facilitate a person's finger piercing the sealing sheet above pill compartments. It is known for example to provide a weakness zone in the form of a single central line of perforations in the cover sheet member above each pill compartment. Consequently, it is easier for patients or the medical staff to gain access to the pill compartments. This is especially desirable for patients that have less strength in their fingers or other physically or neurologically related motor disorders that complicate physical motor actions such as forcing their finger through a sealing sheet over a pill compartment. When such a weakness zone is provided, a central hole will be more readily formed through the sealing sheet since the sheet yields at the weakness zone when pressure is applied thereon. The sealing sheet is likely to form inwardly folded flanges once it is thus pierced as the finger pushes the sheet into the pill compartment.
One problem with conventional pill containers such as the one detailed above, relates to replacing sealing sheets. Indeed, pill prescriptions will often change depending on the ever-evolving medical condition of a patient. However, pill containers such as the one discussed above are usually used to prepare pills for an entire week; and moreover it is possible for pharmacists to prepare more than one pill container at a time for a given user, i.e. medication may be prepared several weeks in advance and consequently several pill containers may be prepared in advance.
When a permanent adhesive is used, changing the medication in a pill container means that the sealing sheet above selected pill compartments needs to be pierced to access the pills. If all the pill compartments need to be access, then the entire pill container may be changed: a new pill receptacle and a new cover sheet member will be used. However, if only selected ones of the pill compartments have been accessed and some others remain sealed, after the pills have been changed, the accessed pill compartments need to be sealed once again. This will occur rather frequently as one type of medication among the several found in a pill container, will be changed for the entire week at a given time of day: for example, the “morning” medication will be changed for the entire week. However, for re-sealing the accessed pill compartments, simply adding another sealing sheet above the previous sealing sheet is then not an option since the original sealing sheet remains over the other pill compartments where the medication was not changed, e.g. above the “lunch”, “supper” and “bedtime” compartments. This means that the addition of an entire sealing sheet over the original sheet results in some pill compartments being sealed with two stacked sealing sheets. Many patients, especially those with physiologically or neurologically related motor disorders, will be incapable of piercing the two stacked sealing sheets to access the pill compartments.
A few solutions have been proposed when the medical condition of the patient requires part of the pills to be changed in the pill container, none of which have been satisfactory.
One known way to go about changing the pills is first to pierce the sealing sheet over the pill compartments where pills need to be changed as described above, change the pills that need to be changed, and to then install a single adhesive sealing repair tab over the specific pill compartments that have been opened. These tabs usually include a recognizable inscription such as a red line to confirm that the pill compartment has been officially re-sealed after it has been tampered with. It is indeed important for the patients and medical staff to be able to confirm that the pill compartments have been accessed by authorized personnel only.
This method of changing pills is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, patients may become suspicious when a pill compartments have obviously been opened, even if the official repair tab is recognizable. Secondly, it is tedious to install individual repair tabs on each pill compartment where pills have been changed. This is especially true since medication is usually changed for the entire week at a given time of day, as indicated hereinabove, requiring that repair tabs be installed on seven pill compartments or more. It is recalled that each repair tab must be positioned precisely to avoid partly covering adjacent pill compartments to prevent the repair tab from reinforcing a sealed pill compartment by stacking on top of the sealing sheet: consequently, placing the repair tabs is a meticulous and time-consuming operation. Thirdly, once a repair tab is installed, there can remain underlying flanges of the original sealing sheet that extend partly into the pill compartment and, more importantly, under the new sealing sheet, if the sealing sheet was pierced without substantially conforming to the contour of the pill compartment. These inopportune flanges can support the peripheral edges of the repair tab. This makes it more difficult for a person to break through the repair tab when the medication underneath it needs to be accessed since the repair tab is supported and reinforced by the underlying portions of the sealing sheet flanges about the hole that was made to first access and change the medication in the pill compartment. Patients with physiologically or neurologically related motor disorders are sometimes incapable of piercing such an undesirably reinforced repair tab.
An alternate known method for changing the pills in a sealed pill container includes cutting open with a knife the bottom wall, opposite the top mouth opening, of each pill compartment where pills need to be changed. This forms bottom openings in the pill compartments while the top openings remain sealed with the sealing sheet. It is then possible to change the pills in the pill compartments through the bottom wall openings and seal the bottom wall openings with an officially recognizable repair tab. The problems noted above are also true for this alternate method of changing the pills, except that the repair tab needs not be pierced to access to the pills in the pill compartments. Indeed, ulterior access by the patient or medical staff to the pills will conventionally be through the sealing sheet that covers the top mouth openings of the pill compartments. It will not be more difficult to gain access to the pills since the user needs not force through a repair tab reinforced by underlying sealing sheet flanges. However, while this latter problem is solved, the other above-noted problems remain and another is created: it is yet more complex and time consuming to change the pills, requiring dedicated equipment to do so: knife and a cutting frame are provided for this purpose, the cutting frame having a slot that can be engaged by the knife to cut the bottom wall off the required pill compartments without cutting the entire pill compartment off.